Q: I've been cranking out green Elf Warriors with Imperious Perfect, as well as green and white ones with Rhys the Redeemed. My opponent played a Maelstrom Pulse on one of the green ones, and said that all the green/white ones would die too. I said that they wouldn't, because they're not the same kind of token. Who's right?
A: This one goes to your opponent. It doesn't matter that the tokens came from different sources, or even that they're different colors. All the tokens are named "Elf Warrior," and that's what Maelstrom Pulse cares about. They'll all get sucked into the vortex of doom.
Trivia time !
Barring copy effects and the cycle of token-making spellchapers in Future Sight, there is one exisiting creature card and one existing token type that have the same name and would both die to a single Maelstrom Pulse. What is their name ? Bonus for right spelling.
Exalted Angel has been errated to have Lifelink as well as being the classic template for Lifelink. The only thing that makes Spirit Link special is that the "you" is the controller of the aura, not the controller of the creature (unlike Lifelink).
It was clearly stated in the article detailing the rules changes on mtg.com that any "lifelink" creature that wasn't actually printed with the keyword Lifelink on it would revert back to the old triggered ability to fit their printed rules text accurately. The Oracle errata giving them Lifelink was only aesthetic, as the text they were printed with was the exact same thing, but now it isn't, so they're losing the keyword. These triggered abilities indeed still stack. That means you'll still be able to abuse, say, multiple Essence Slivers.
Loxodon Warhammer is the only card that's been printed with both wordings. Since it has the Lifelink keyword on one version, it gives actual Lifelink, not the triggered ability as stated on the Mirrodin version.
Okay how about this, the only faerie my opponent has in play is a spellstutter sprite and no other faeries, will it work then?
If you remove from play what would be your opponent's only legal choice in response to the champion ability, chances are they'll have to sacrifice Mistbind Clique, yes. Note, however, that they could play a faerie with flash after you played your removal spell but still before champion resolves, and choose it.
last question regarding this, can I path to exile the choosen champion, if say its isn't a bitterblossom, will that remove both?
Since the choice is made on resolution of the ability and not when it is played, no, you can't try to remove the chosen faerie then. By the time you get priority to play Path to Exile, it's already removed from the game. You can try to remove the most likely choice in response to the campion ability, but when it resolves, your opponent may choose an other faerie that's still in play.
Bowser is great as long as you're not fighting 1 on 1 against a human who's playing a fast character. Computers are too dumb to exploit Bowser's lack of speed, and in multiplayer, you can generally land some powerful, slower hits when opponents are focused on each other instead of you. His firebreath is great to damage multiple players in line, too.
Goddamnit. Why does WotC hate us combo-players? Augh, this was definitely going to be the most fun combo deck ever
Chances are that the already played combo with Hypergenesis is better than the combo with Bonds of Agony would've been. With Hypergenesis, you only need some strong and hard-to-deal-with fatties in hand, while with Bonds, you need your life total to be higher than your opponent's when you go off, which is harder to do than it may sound especially if you're facing some kind of aggro.
Once again a nice article, Shin. It'll be of great use to me in preparing for the match-up of my horrible deck that no one should be playing (BR aggro) against Reveillark. I'm pretty sure I'd have a chance by bringing it my whole sideboard (Deathmark, Thoughtseize, Thought Hemorrhage, Infest, Everlasting Torment). You made me confident that Infest is more than ever a good idea since it deals with Paladin en-Vec beautifully.
Quote from DoomBring3r »
Snakeform is great vs Lark if you can have it resolving and play it right, it basically kills it and screws the recursion mechanic over, and you get to cantrip, neat.
Note that Snakeform is even better against Lark when they try to evoke it than when they keep it on the board, and that's great since as Shin points out in the article, they want to evoke it more often than not. You just have to snakeform with the sacrifice trigger on the stack, and you basically get the same result as if your counter-drew with a CC. That sure is something really cool to do in a green, non-blue deck (and still is good for a deck like 5CB which already plays CC).
Yes, it can, because the creation and the changing of targets is all done during resolution, and the Fork (or equivalent) is still on the stack and is a potential target while it's resolving. It's the same thing as Misdirection changing the target of a counterspell to Misdirection itself, countering the counterspell.
Interesting article ! I myself have a lot of Titus in me. Even though I love synergy, I also hate to have dead cards in hand, and I rarely play straight combo.
However, I don't think what you call Titus is a player psychographic at all, neither on the Timmy / Johnny / Spike axis nor on the Vorthos / Melvin axis. I think it's a trait some players have, that I relate more to the Timmy / Johnny / Spike axis in that being Titus pretty much means "not being Johnny" without implying being either Timmy or Spike.
Hey Shin, it’s the annoying RB aggro guy again! First and foremost, know that this was again an enjoyable read for me, and that I still appreciate your column.
However, I think you know what I came here to say.
At this point, I was both shocked and a little upset. The biggest question was why this guy had chosen to play a deck that could not beat Swans just a week after the deck had won a Grand Prix. I also had to wonder how unlucky I was to have to play against RB Aggro in the first round of the tournament. The match-up is far from unwinnable, but it is very challenging and most times comes down to the quality of draws from the two players.
You are very well aware that a RB aggro deck adapted to beat Swans put Charles Gerndon Dupont into the Top 4 in Seattle, and you again chose very consciously to not say a single damn word about it, in my opinion because you don’t want to admit you might be wrong, and because you hate the deck.
For me, the thing that clearly demonstrates your bias on this matter is what I bolded. Without statistics, I won’t be able to state this as a fact, but I am pretty sure that a RB deck tweaked to beat Swans has a better win percentage against Swans than a Faerie deck against RB, no matter how much its pilot tries to prepare for it. I might be wrong on the scale : it may be around equal instead of better. But still, saying that RB simply can’t beat Swans, something Dupont clearly proved isn’t true, and then saying that Faerie’s matchup with RB is far from unwinnable doesn’t make any sense to me.
I think the Doran deck might make a comeback due to its win at the Grand Prix, but I can't say for how long. I didn't think much of the deck even though it won the event, as I hate decks like that. It was mostly an aggro deck that had a midrange game plan, and that just doesn't do much for me. It's obviously a pretty solid archetype considering that it won a large pro-level tournament, but I definitely think that Grand Prix should have been Fae's, without a doubt.
That one really made me smile. Re-read this paragraph, and then try again to tell me that you are not biased.
Here’s my own biased opinion : considering the number of Fae’s in the Top 8, I think that Grand Prix should have been BR’s, without a doubt. With a little more luck, Dupont could very well have beaten Massicard 2-1 on the back of its Terminates and Deathmarks, and he then would have proceeded to burn Lundquist to ashes in the finals.
I want to insist again on the fact that I don’t hate you at all for your bias, that I like your articles and that I’ll keep reading them. I’m just gonna take them for what they are, aka personal thoughts from a very good but imperfect, biased player, as every other Magic player is to some degree. I expect you to take any comments I post the same way.
The thing about Chapin's statement that makes it acceptable the way I see it is the use of the word legal. That word is something that for many players, me included, would ring a loud bell : "Why say legal ? Is there an illegal target there ? Ah, yea, the Colossus". Obviously, Chapin couldn't have said "I give fear to every creature I control", because, well, that statement could not have been true. But he's been just vague enough for him to possibly very legally mind trick his opponent while being truthful. There was a very low possibility in my book for the opponent to miss the Colossus, but I consider Chapin brilliant for trying and succeeding. I am very hateful of cheaters, bad sports, and the like, but this kind of mind trick is something I do respect a lot as high level tactics for the mind game that is Magic.
No. "Comes into play with" denotes a replacement effect that modifies how Ulasht comes into play. Thus, the ability checks the number of green and/or red creatures right before Ulasht and any other creature that Warp World would put into play actually are on the battlefield.
You need to specify the targets, otherwise, by the same logic, it would be legal for the opponent to block everything, claiming Chapin had given his opponent's creatures fear.
No it wouldn't. Having fear doesn't make a white or red creature able to block other creatures with fear.
In the interest of full public disclosure, Gavin has emailed me back, and said that this is going to be discussed and an answer should be forthcoming in a couple of weeks. And to make Woapalanne's job easier, I'd also request that discussion on cascade/Bond of Agony/"X" be tabled. If I'm wrong, I'm more than happy to admit it, and really perhaps what I should have said was "I'm confused, because of this other ruling..." that seemed to contradict. I don't recall any announced change of "X" in that respect, hence why my thinking is that it doesn't work.
Should Gavin say otherwise, and it does work, I'll happily eat my words.
A couple of weeks ? Well, it seems that question is just that hard to answer, and just that important. This is so exciting ! Perhaps The Great MaGo, Lord of the Rules, will have to intervene and adapt the rules to this interaction. The fate of a cascade combo deck is to be decided !
Fascinating, it's not often that two of our most experienced and renowned judges on Salvation disagree on a rules issue ! I myself cannot be sure, but it does seem from his post that Woapalanne is right, and that the combo does work.
If so, it'll have to be clarified on as many relevant places as possible, and it'll have to be fixed on MTGO very soon, because this could become a powerful extended combo deck. I'm not sure if it would be actually better than the Hypergenesis one, but it's still a distinct possibility, that players should be able to know if it works or not and that they should have the right to test on MTGO if it does.
Barring copy effects and the cycle of token-making spellchapers in Future Sight, there is one exisiting creature card and one existing token type that have the same name and would both die to a single Maelstrom Pulse. What is their name ? Bonus for right spelling.
It was clearly stated in the article detailing the rules changes on mtg.com that any "lifelink" creature that wasn't actually printed with the keyword Lifelink on it would revert back to the old triggered ability to fit their printed rules text accurately. The Oracle errata giving them Lifelink was only aesthetic, as the text they were printed with was the exact same thing, but now it isn't, so they're losing the keyword. These triggered abilities indeed still stack. That means you'll still be able to abuse, say, multiple Essence Slivers.
Loxodon Warhammer is the only card that's been printed with both wordings. Since it has the Lifelink keyword on one version, it gives actual Lifelink, not the triggered ability as stated on the Mirrodin version.
If you remove from play what would be your opponent's only legal choice in response to the champion ability, chances are they'll have to sacrifice Mistbind Clique, yes. Note, however, that they could play a faerie with flash after you played your removal spell but still before champion resolves, and choose it.
Since the choice is made on resolution of the ability and not when it is played, no, you can't try to remove the chosen faerie then. By the time you get priority to play Path to Exile, it's already removed from the game. You can try to remove the most likely choice in response to the campion ability, but when it resolves, your opponent may choose an other faerie that's still in play.
Bowser is great as long as you're not fighting 1 on 1 against a human who's playing a fast character. Computers are too dumb to exploit Bowser's lack of speed, and in multiplayer, you can generally land some powerful, slower hits when opponents are focused on each other instead of you. His firebreath is great to damage multiple players in line, too.
Chances are that the already played combo with Hypergenesis is better than the combo with Bonds of Agony would've been. With Hypergenesis, you only need some strong and hard-to-deal-with fatties in hand, while with Bonds, you need your life total to be higher than your opponent's when you go off, which is harder to do than it may sound especially if you're facing some kind of aggro.
Note that Snakeform is even better against Lark when they try to evoke it than when they keep it on the board, and that's great since as Shin points out in the article, they want to evoke it more often than not. You just have to snakeform with the sacrifice trigger on the stack, and you basically get the same result as if your counter-drew with a CC. That sure is something really cool to do in a green, non-blue deck (and still is good for a deck like 5CB which already plays CC).
However, I don't think what you call Titus is a player psychographic at all, neither on the Timmy / Johnny / Spike axis nor on the Vorthos / Melvin axis. I think it's a trait some players have, that I relate more to the Timmy / Johnny / Spike axis in that being Titus pretty much means "not being Johnny" without implying being either Timmy or Spike.
However, I think you know what I came here to say.
You are very well aware that a RB aggro deck adapted to beat Swans put Charles Gerndon Dupont into the Top 4 in Seattle, and you again chose very consciously to not say a single damn word about it, in my opinion because you don’t want to admit you might be wrong, and because you hate the deck.
For me, the thing that clearly demonstrates your bias on this matter is what I bolded. Without statistics, I won’t be able to state this as a fact, but I am pretty sure that a RB deck tweaked to beat Swans has a better win percentage against Swans than a Faerie deck against RB, no matter how much its pilot tries to prepare for it. I might be wrong on the scale : it may be around equal instead of better. But still, saying that RB simply can’t beat Swans, something Dupont clearly proved isn’t true, and then saying that Faerie’s matchup with RB is far from unwinnable doesn’t make any sense to me.
That one really made me smile. Re-read this paragraph, and then try again to tell me that you are not biased.
Here’s my own biased opinion : considering the number of Fae’s in the Top 8, I think that Grand Prix should have been BR’s, without a doubt. With a little more luck, Dupont could very well have beaten Massicard 2-1 on the back of its Terminates and Deathmarks, and he then would have proceeded to burn Lundquist to ashes in the finals.
I want to insist again on the fact that I don’t hate you at all for your bias, that I like your articles and that I’ll keep reading them. I’m just gonna take them for what they are, aka personal thoughts from a very good but imperfect, biased player, as every other Magic player is to some degree. I expect you to take any comments I post the same way.
No it wouldn't. Having fear doesn't make a white or red creature able to block other creatures with fear.
A couple of weeks ? Well, it seems that question is just that hard to answer, and just that important. This is so exciting ! Perhaps The Great MaGo, Lord of the Rules, will have to intervene and adapt the rules to this interaction. The fate of a cascade combo deck is to be decided !
If so, it'll have to be clarified on as many relevant places as possible, and it'll have to be fixed on MTGO very soon, because this could become a powerful extended combo deck. I'm not sure if it would be actually better than the Hypergenesis one, but it's still a distinct possibility, that players should be able to know if it works or not and that they should have the right to test on MTGO if it does.